Dion ticket sales hopes dampened

Only a handful of Celine Dion fans queued for tickets yesterday for her January Kai Tak concert, sinking organisers' predictions of long queues.

By lunchtime, only 250 of the thousands of tickets available had been sold at HMV stores, which opened two hours early in anticipation of a first-day rush.

'There weren't huge crowds, that's for sure,' HMV commercial director Stuart Fraser said.

Rain and tight end-of-the-month budgets could be to blame, he said.

'The concert's a while away . . . I think a lot of people will come out to get them at the weekend.' Dick Kaufman, spokesman for the promoter Arena Group, was still buoyant yesterday.

'We would have expected more sales this morning; probably the rain dampened things,' he said.